IVORY GULL. 
33 : 
about the head. I was within twenty yards of it. In tlie 
latter part of i\Iay, in the same year, a wlialer which had 
sprung a leak put into the voe, and the surgeon on board, 
Mr White, kindly gave me the skin of a bird of this species 
which had been shot only a few days before. It was in per- 
fectly white plumage, and had the tip of its bill red, the remain- 
ing portion greenisli grey. 
[A search in the journals has not shown any other notices 
of this bird ; but there can be no doubt that, though in any 
case a decided rarity, it is a tolerably regular visitor to the 
islands. In the Zoologist” for 1864, p. 9094, the author 
says, “ I have only seen one Ivory Gull this winter.” A spe- 
cimen of this Gull was shown me in the summer of 1854 on 
board a whaler which had anchored in the Sound to land some 
Shetland seamen, and this too was stated to have been very 
recently killed ; nor do I feel at all sure that it was not in the 
flesh. Naturalists visiting Shetland would do well to bear in 
mind that the islands are not so cut off from all the rest of the 
far north as might seem, many whalers calling every season to 
land the Shetland portion of the crew — among the flnest seamen 
in the world, by the way. Thus, in the case of an Arctic species, 
scarce in the British Isles, the procuring the skin of a bird in 
Orkney or Shetland by no means warrants the certain inference 
that the bird itself was found there. I do not know whether 
whalers call now, for the world has changed much in twenty 
years, but it may be as well to remark, for the benefit of some 
brother in need, that if one is short of powder or percussion- 
caps, a supply of the very best of either, surplus stores from 
the seal-shooting in the Arctic regions, may sometimes be had 
on board these ships by the courtesy of the captain. What a 
pleasant run it was on that fine summer’s day! We landed on 
Balt a in the ship’s boats, our own having been so knocked 
about under her quarter in boarding in a sea-way, that the 
carpenters kindly took us in hand for repairs ; and it was Indeed 
a sight to see the fine fellows leap out upon the beach, and roll 
over and over upon the green sward of the charming little island, 
